Matter will revolutionize your smart home – here’s everything you need to know
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Matter 1.0 is here. After hearing for months about how this software standard will bring a huge benefit to our smart home, users can finally see it in action as it rolls out to new gadgets and old favorites.
More than 500 companies around the world are working together under the Connectivity Standards Alliance to bring Matter to life. With the launch of Matter 1.0 and the start of the Matter certification program, it should now be much easier to find smart home technology that will benefit you every day rather than giving you a ton of headaches.
But what is matter and how does it work? We are here with the answers.
What is matter?
The promise of smart home technology is that your gadgets can communicate with each other to create a system that is better than the sum of its parts. An example of an ideal world could be that you unlock the smart lock on your front door after you get home from a long day at work and your Amazon Echo Dot (2020) smart speaker can instantly turn on your favorite tunes while a smart coffee maker gives you a relaxing experience. drink.
Unfortunately, in order to achieve something like this, you have to spend a lot of time researching whether a device is compatible with the gadgets you already own – and if it isn’t, there may be no alternative.
That’s where Matter comes in. Instead of many smaller micro-ecosystems, Matter-supporting devices will all be able to communicate as part of one large smart home setup. When you buy a new Matter compatible product you don’t have to worry about whether it will interface with your existing Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa or Apple Homekit powered setup, it should just be able to integrate seamlessly.
How will Matter work?
Using Matter shouldn’t change the way you currently interact with your smart home setup. Once the update has rolled out to your devices and their smartphone apps, you should be able to continue using everything as you do now, just more options for the gadgets you can add to your home. The only thing to be aware of is that different brands do not integrate their products with Matter in the same way.
Some, like Phillips Hue, will make almost all of their existing devices (as well as new ones) Matter compatible. Like Phillips, companies will do this through a software update — which will happen for the Hue Bridge in “Q1, 2023” or January, February or March — bringing the devices into the fold of the new standard.
There may be some hiccups here and there – Philips needs to leave the Philips Hue Play HDMI sync box and Philips Hue Tap Dial Switch dial for now, and some settings may be reset by the change – but for the most part, the transition will to Matter are quick and painless.
Unfortunately, this total adoption of Matter won’t be possible for every existing smart home device. For some brands – such as Amazon and Google – very old models are left behind.
If you have the latest smart device like the new Echo Dot (5th generation), the Google Nets Hub Max or the Echo Show 10 (among others), those should get the Matter update. However, models older than a few years don’t necessarily offer the same support. In those cases, you should either upgrade your smart speakers or forgo the benefits that Matter brings.
Furthermore, even some fairly recent models will not update to Matter, with support for the new standard only available for newly released smart home gadgets from some brands. Such is the case with Nanoleaf’s smart lighting – only the new Matter-compatible additions to the Essentials line will adopt the Matter standard.
That said, even if your older gadgets don’t get the update, your existing smart home setup should continue to work as well as ever. So, unless you’ve been planning to upgrade it already, there shouldn’t be any need to rush to replace everything right away.
However, if you’re looking to buy some upgrades – let’s say you want to take advantage of some of this year’s best Black Friday deals on smart home tech – you’ll want to make sure what you’re buying supports Matter, otherwise, your new purchases could become obsolete pretty quickly. touch.